


Don't Be Mad

by shirotabek



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Background/Implied Heith, Daddy Kink, Endgame Shance, Grinding, Guilt Jerkin', Intercrural Sex, Jealousy, Lance Loves Dads 2k17, Langst, M/M, Masturbation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sorry to the Lance/Keith's dad shippers I created, Violent Hypotheticals, Wet Dream, shangst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-11-30 00:21:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11452122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shirotabek/pseuds/shirotabek
Summary: The team finding Keith's dad on the opposite side of the universe from earth was probably not on the list of things Lance expected. That list usually included intolerable food goo, some fighting, being hopelessly in love with his team leader who couldn't care any less, cool explosions... If he needs a new normal though, something to distract him from that third fact, he's glad it's Keith's hot as hell cowboy dad. Not his problem if Keith has an aneurism every time Lance mutters 'daddy' within 500 yards of him, and if Shiro seems weirdly pissed too? Well. That's not Lance's problem either.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chashuu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chashuu/gifts).



This was heaven.

He couldn’t really classify it as heaven on earth, because. Well. They were approximately a million zillion years away from earth, give or take some distance, and despite “heaven in space” sounding like a super cool movie or description of an acid trip, it didn’t really hold that same _umph_ that Lance needed in his occasionally meticulously planned turns of phrase.

Suffice it to say though, this was as close to heaven on earth as he was going to get any time soon.

Some things you want so badly that you’re scared to even ask for them. Sometimes that thing is happiness, or a big opportunity. Maybe it’s love, or the confidence to do something important with yourself, for yourself. For Lance, at least right now, that deep-seated desire was a pretty simple one: another hunky slab of man meat, preferably one he wouldn’t fall in love with in thirty minutes or less. Falling in head-over-heels puppy love with your almighty and wise team leader faster than you could get a free pizza was definitely too much pressure for Lance when they already had that whole “keeping every living thing out of apocalyptic peril” thing on their shoulders. Even though he felt every now and then (read: often (read: almost always)) like he wasn’t contributing much to their overall mission, it was still goddamn stressful to just be part of a team where the fate of the universe depended on whether he made one too many mullet jokes and got murdered in cold blood. Usually he thrived under pressure, but out here, one joke that went too far could end the universe as he knew it when he woke up with one of those beloved Kogane knives jutting out of his esophagus. Not only was _he_ dead in this scenario, but so was everyone else ever when they couldn’t form Voltron anymore.

Basically, Lance had a lot riding on him.

Only not in the fun way.

Hence the secret wish for some hot dudeage.

To be fair, he was having an awesome time on the lady front. Alien chicks were hot enough that he still didn’t really mind getting handcuffed by them, even if that meant losing Blue and then being relentlessly mocked for thinking with the wrong head. And mermaids! Fuckin’ mermaids. Hunk knew all too well of Lance’s thing for mermaids, and honestly what a saint was he for listening through graphic depictions of nasty dreams about them and throwing in the occasional opinion on Lance’s never ending quest to come up with a good way to have sex with one. Like, logistically. Besides a blowjob. His last breakthrough had been the epiphany that frottage against scales and a hot fish babe would either feel super awesome or super weird, and he would put some serious GAC on it being at least a little bit of both.

That conversation had probably made meeting the mermaids a little awkward for Hunk, once Lance considered those factors in conjunction, but what else was your best dude for if he wouldn’t let you talk about rubbing your dick on fish ass? What was _life_ for if you couldn’t talk about rubbing your dick on fish ass?

He specifically remembered Hunk chucking something at his head when he asked if grinding against a mermaid could be considered dry humping even fully clothed because ‘like. You know. They’re always wet. Like most girls around me, actually…”

What a guy, that Hunk was.

But guys! Guys. That’s what Lance needed a steaming injection of. Alien ladies were definitely doing it for him, but the fact that most of the alien dudes they’d met had turned out evil was a bit of a bummer. The worse bummer was that the biggest aliens like Galra were the most evil so far; Corans and Rolos weren’t doing it for him. The _worst_ bummer of them all, though, was that apparently space had the same rules as video game species: women were pretty and roughly human shaped where the men looked like horrific piles of… well, not anything you wanted to stick your dick in. That was for sure.

So it only made sense that he had hyper fixated on Shiro, although he didn’t have the same excuse back in the Garrison where there had been plenty of fresh and respectable looking meat. He wanted to blame Shiro looking like a god on the lack of options, but he knew he’d pick a hand full of Shiro tiddy over frotting a mermaid any day. To be honest, that was too much commitment for him, especially for a guy that Lance was over 90% sure hated him. He _needed_ a distraction, and god, did he get one.

When someone’s deadbeat dad would come to town, Lance’s experience told him that the kid usually sulked and acted out more than usual, hoping for some attention but knowing they wouldn’t get any. Keith was like that every day of the year though, so Lance had some genuine fear for how much of ‘teen angst central’ Keith was going to slip into when their most recent mission had them stumbling upon the guy’s dad.

Actually, there had been no fear when they first found him, because in Lance’s defense, how was he supposed to know it was Keith’s dad? When they met people this far away from earth, there was no way he could just _assume_ any guy with a funny haircut was related to Keith. More importantly, this guy was hot. So hot. The amount of hot that entailed an eyebrow scar. Which was super hot. Lance felt like he shouldn’t be held responsible for anything that left his mouth when big burly dudes with stubble and eyebrow scars came around near him. His eyes had widened as he tried to take in all of Mr. Beefy Stranger at once, eyes only flickering in Shiro’s direction twice during the cheeky little once over — something considered progress in Lance’s world. If anything was going to let him focus on something outside of the butterflies Shiro unfairly created and then neglected in his stomach, it was this guy and his damn cowboy talk.

In general Lance fashion, his mouth was not necessarily as thoughtful or articulate as the thought process he was caught up in.

“I will personally see to your rescue if you promise to stick it to me, and stick it to me good.”

A stupid thing to say? Absolutely. What kind of answer was he expecting? God only knew, but what he did hear back made him choke on the air around them.

“I’ve surely agreed to worse deals than that.”

Jesus Christ. Lance was in the middle of praying he didn’t get a boner in paladin armor from this guy dragging his eyes down Lance’s body far more daringly than probably anyone ever had when suddenly all he heard was the thud of his own head hitting the ground.

“I’ll kill you!”

It took a few disoriented moments for Lance to even realize how bad his head was aching from the impact, and he was wondering confusedly if a bomb had gone off when it finally registered with him that Keith was on top of him, trying to break free of Shiro’s grip on his bicep to, as it seemed, begin beating the unholy hell out of Lance. Still a little out of it, he tried to wriggle out from under where Keith was settled on his chest and was eventually successful when Shiro got a better grip with his Galra hand on that demon child they called Keith.

“What the _quiznak_ is wrong with you?” Lance demanded, holding the now throbbing left side of his head and trying not to think too much about the pain or the fact that Shiro had protected him from Satan baby for once in his life.

“That’s my dad! You’re not gonna fuck my dad!”

And oh, god.

If his head hadn’t been killing him, that would have been the funniest moment of Lance’s entire life. Never before had he seen so much rage in Keith’s eyes directed at anyone who didn’t have a gun aimed at him or a knife to his throat. He really, _really_ did not want Lance to fuck his dad.

Which, you know. Lance could respect. At least, he could have, if Keith didn’t have such a hot dad.

“Let’s start over,” Keith’s dad suggested, not all that phased by the near-murder that had just occurred both in front of and because of him. Lance didn’t know when the guy had disappeared from Keith’s life, but he wasn’t surprised if Keith had been murdery since slip’n’sliding out of whatever Galra uterus he’d been spawned in. Made sense that his dad wouldn’t be shocked by his behavior. “I’m Kenneth Kogane, and lowest bidder gets to save me from this shit joint. Sticking it to Legs over here is the offer to beat.”

The slight twinge of an accent was only just clicking properly for Lance and causing a slight twinge of arousal in the process, or at least it would have been if the roaring ache of his head wasn’t the main sensation priority. His eyes darted over to Shiro as they always did, and despite Shiro’s firm hold on Keith’s upper arm that was still preventing all hell from breaking loose, he looked almost as livid as Keith. That figured. Shiro could only last so long defending him from Keith before his instincts kicked and reoriented back to their regular mantra of “Keith, Keith, Keith…” Lance assumed Shiro must have blacked out for those few moments where he was dragging Keith off, or that he didn’t think they could find a new blue paladin easily enough to let Lance get obliterated.

Woah. Woah there, cowboy. Lance blinked a few times as he tried to snap back into ‘hey, there’s a hot guy with the jaw of Superman flirting with me a little’ mode over the ‘sweet Jesus, I would fling myself out of the castle if it meant Shiro would pay me some positive attention’ mindset.

“Keith and Kenneth?” Pidge echoed in amusement, not all that phased either by the 300 layers of animosity and hormones that were bouncing around the room.

“That’s right” came drawled out from Mr. Kogane as he accepted Hunk’s wordless offer to help him up off his ass. “But you can call me Ken. Anything but Kenny.” He smiled with maybe an eighth of his muscle capacity, expression resulting in something so infuriatingly vague in meaning that Lance felt himself flush a little with weak but tingly hopes that it might be a smirk.

Flush or no flush, something stupid was about to come out of his mouth again. His skill of knowing when that was about to happen would have been a lot more useful if he could actually stop the stupid thing from being said. It was like being able to tell the future, but in a universe where nothing you do can change that path.

“How about daddy?”

He half braced himself for the inevitable assault, but all he was met with was a soft chuckle and grunts of effort from both Keith and Shiro, the latter of whom was putting in some serious effort to not let the former slip out of his grip. It was basically tug of war with Keith’s arm, which generally would have resulted in an easy win for Shiro, but the advantages of 1) it being Keith’s arm and 2) Keith being filled to the brim with more fury than humanly possible for his size made the fight a close call for a few moments before Keith gave in.

“I don’t know, Keith’s never been too good at sharing,” Ken answered, lips twitching up into even less of a smile this time, but it was just so evident in his eyes that he found Lance… something. Funny? Hot? Did he just like the attention? Lance didn't care when it came down to it, and he sort of stopped paying attention when they all started to shift from focusing on how Daddy Kogane was an absolute daddy to planning how everyone could get out safely. It was just… nice. To get attention, for starters. He’d been hoping for a hot guy, yeah, but he had never dared to wish that guy would flirt back. That happened with any gender about once in a blue moon. Lance didn’t know how often that actually was, but since he had never seen one even this far out into space, he figured it was a rare occurrence.

As someone who had a history of making crushes into way more than they really were, he wasn’t even certain that Ken _was_ flirting back. God, it wasn’t even a crush. He was being an idiot. This wasn’t all that hard to understand if he could just chill out a little and look at it rationally. Factually, this was just an attention exchange, both getting and giving — and Lance wanted that far too much. Plain and simple. Real attention. It was kind of hard to come by with their lifestyle, with how some of the team felt about him, and although Hunk did the best he could, Lance definitely couldn’t call Hunk daddy without laughing for at least 20 minutes afterward.

Also, calling Hunk daddy didn’t push Keith’s buttons (as far as Lance knew, at least). Did it make him a bully to get satisfaction out of Keith’s cute little eye twitches of rage? He hoped not, trying to focus his brain in on that little bit of morally-grey enjoyment instead of letting other motives bubble up to the surface. Like, as a hypothetical, really enjoying the attention it was earning him from Shiro. Totally unhealthy and unsatisfying attention. Because it only had to do with the fact that Keith was pissed. Lance didn’t have the time or energy to think about how kind of messed up it was to flirt with someone to get run off of angry attention. He certainly wasn’t going to dwell on how there was no realistic way that this kind of attention could turn into the soft cuddling he wanted and imagined as he tried to fall asleep every night with his heart caught mid-pulse, aching and begging him to go ask Shiro for a chance to prove he wasn’t as obnoxious as he maybe seemed. And that he could be good to him, so good to him, and take care of him, and-

Yeah. No. Whatever. That was… no. He’d just fuck Keith’s dad.

“You’re gonna _what_ now?” Ten minutes tops had passed since they had returned to the castle with Ken in tow before a fight broke out and Keith had his fist clenched so tightly that Lance was pretty sure he’d snap a dick in half if he tried to give a hand job like that.

“I _said_ ,” he replied a little louder, the smug look painted on his face a good indicator of how pleasing it was not to get angry back for once, “I’m gonna _fuck_ your hot farm dad, Keith. I’m gonna save a horse and ride a motherquiznaking cowboy.”

Never before had a black eye been so worth it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for the love of god, don't ask how old lance, ken, and/or shiro are because it's a cartoon and i do not care.
> 
> thanks to my old dad [chii](https://twitter.com/xfwipsx/) for the inspiration and the line about fucking keith's hot farm dad.


	2. Chapter 2

Honestly, Lance had been a fool, and a damn dirty one at that if he had ever convinced himself that his shit with Keith before now constituted a rivalry. Because honestly? Keith had paid him almost as little attention in the Garrison as Shiro did here. He couldn’t pretend that he didn’t find it super, like, insulting or whatever that Keith either didn’t remember him at all or just pretended not to when they both showed up to save Shiro–that was the kind of shit that stung for a while. Not like his self-esteem couldn’t handle a massive blow, but Lance definitely wasn’t ecstatic to learn a peer hadn’t considered him even worthy of brain storage. Telling himself that Keith was just too stupid to remember could only do so much for an ego that grew more fragile by the Shiro-attentionless day, but all that still wasn’t enough for the animosity to be particularly intense. Even enraged shouts of “I’ll stick you in a wormhole!” mere inches from Keith’s ugly mug were nothing.

Nothing compared to this.

Had Keith reacted differently to this shitstorm, maybe showing his hurt instead of being so  _ rude _ and  _ aggressive _ and so goddamn  _ Keith _ … well, Lance could have attempted some sympathy. He was a reasonable guy with pretty well honed empathetic skills most of the time, and you didn’t have to tell him twice that he definitely wouldn’t have enjoyed watching Keith flirt with his dad. Probably would have burned the place down upon seeing the reverse, actually, but that would be for his mama’s sake, and also, more importantly, he wasn’t as massive of a dick as Keith. He still had a little wiggle room left to hulk out before he was pegged as the crazy guy. 

Keith had now reached that point; he was the crazy guy. If he didn’t want to open up to Lance, that was fine. They’d never been close before, so he didn’t really see why it was his responsibility to be ‘considerate of the poor guy’s feelings’ like Hunk, the world’s most traitor-y Eggs Benedict Arnold, had muttered under his breath as they all made their way to gather and deal with the situation. Right now it was just more rewarding to keep amping up Keith’s irritation and to ignore Hunk’s (probably astute) observation that it was most likely rough on Keith to immediately have to compete for his long lost dad’s attention. As if Lance hadn’t been competing with Keith for Shiro’s attention this whole time. As if Lance hadn’t been competing with Keith since he got to the goddamn Garrison. As if he didn’t deserve something nice of his own for once. Sure, he might have doubted himself, wondering if lip bites or exaggerated winks at Ken would be a step too far, wondering if all of this made him vindictive in ways he didn’t want to be. The black eye though, served as an achey reminder that Keith hadn’t shown him all that much understanding, and that Lance didn't have to feel so guilty since his beautiful skin had been blemished by Keith’s grubby little desert hands. 

Maybe that was biased.  _ Ken _ had desert hands, but Lance wouldn’t call them grubby, and they certainly weren’t little. They were… broad. And they looked callused. And just imagining how they’d turn so deftly over anything that had been handed to him, mapping out the object and getting a feel for its weight and ability, Lance physically felt his thoughts go a little fuzzy. When he managed to take good, long looks at Ken, he didn’t need all that motivation of wanting to win something over Keith for once. Letting his mind wander off let him aimlessly float around the slightly lust-tinged haze that filled his head. It was a more pleasant headspace than he had frequented in a while, kind of resembling that TV static of awesomeness he got after orgasm. Unlike that feeling, though, this one didn’t end in trying to ignore the guilt that had settled on his chest because he’d thought of someone he shouldn’t have, or in futile attempts to swallow the lump that set up shop in his throat whenever he remembered he couldn’t have that someone. Not in this way. Not in any other. Not in any goddamn universe could he get The Someone to touch him like that, in a way crafted solely to bring him pleasure. It would require Someone to want Lance to be pleased, which wasn’t the fucking case.

But god, it could have been with Ken, with the way they had been acting so far. Shiro and Keith were treating Ken like a prisoner, though, what with the not letting him out of sight and also the handcuffs. Definitely the handcuffs played a big part of the hostile tone that no one would let dissolve any. Apparently it assuaged nothing that the whole team was present; they still watched him so fastidiously that Lance was a little put off. He was Keith’s dad, what the hell was he gonna do? And why did Shiro slam his fist on the arm of his seat all pissed like that when Lance merely suggested he be the one to escort Ken to the bathroom? Ken had asked, after all. Lance was just trying to be polite. He highly doubted he was going to get murdered by the guy, anyway. Unless… Maybe they both knew Cowboy Kogane was packing some serious heat and were genuinely worried about the state and safety of Lance’s asshole. It was probably a good thing to worry about, because with how little self control he had right now, he probably would have let Ken tear him a new one.

If he promised to fuck that one too, at least.

“So…” Ken began when clearing his throat pointedly twice did nothing to diffuse the uncomfortable tension. It was understandably awkward; he had seven people staring at him while he sat with his hands pinned behind him. Lance would’ve felt goddamn vulnerable in the same position, and that was taking into account his indecent penchant for being restrained. “Y’all come here often?”

Lance let out a god-ugly laugh of surprise. Half of the amusement could be sourced to the actual humor of the remark, but a solid other half was shock. He was used to being the only one to make unwelcome jokes in terrible situations. Ken instantly became an appreciated addition in Lance’s opinion for more than his crotch being an eye magnet. Holy shit, did Lance wanna see what happened under those jeans…

He didn’t have much time to be embarrassed of how ugly the laughter had been when his focus already had drifted of to the guy’s  _ dick _ , for shit’s sake, but soon enough, that wasn’t the only viable distraction. Ken’s line of sight drew to Lance as soon as the noise had registered, and before he knew it, those dark eyes were dragging down his frame again. He was a little too certain that his body was trying to fill in the blanks and make it feel like that gaze was callused farm hands instead, and-

Oh my god, was he seriously this horny? Or did he just need attention? Today’s sequence of events was just telling him that jacking it to the weak memory of Shiro’s efforted grunts was not enough to soothe his sexual frustration. He never let himself think about Shiro like this in his actual presence, so maybe Lance wasn’t even in love with his stupid hero, and he just felt too depraved for wanting to fuck him so bad.

(It wasn’t true. Shit. ‘Cause that woulda been such a good out for this whole ‘unbearable pining’ mess.)

“You’re not just gonna be able to crack jokes until we laugh and let you out scot-free,” Keith answered sharply, unceremoniously yanking Lance from his own fantasy world that was now almost exclusively comprised of Ken fucking him so hard he saw stars, couldn’t walk, and forgot Shiro.

In that particular order.

“That used to be the way to get you to quit pouting.” Ken’s answer was thoughtful even if his air of taking nothing seriously was seemingly permanent, and his attention flickered to Keith as fast as it had gone to Lance. 

Which sucked. Lance felt the heat that had been thrumming under his skin start to evaporate into nothing. Feeling nothing was worse than coldness when the immediacy of warmth had just been just so real to him right under his fingertips, even if nothing had been touching him with any tangible heat. He needed the heat back, imaginary or not. He needed the attention it entailed. Was attention addiction a thing? Whatever. He had probably had that for a long time if it was actually a thing. His teachers probably wouldn’t have been surprised.  Preening under the spotlight and doing anything to get into it weren’t news to Lance. There was a reason it was so easy to get him handcuffed when a pretty alien giggled at him, this time actually not including his indecent penchant for being restrained. 

Keith spoke before Lance had a chance to demand eyes on him again. “Don’t,” he spit out, voice hoarse as he took a emphatic step forward. Looked like he was trying to assert himself despite a voice that was far too close to breaking. Leave it up to Keith to smother vulnerability with hostility. Lance could only psychoanalyze the angst machine for so long before his eyes sheepishly drifted to Shiro, who had taken a few steps forward as well. Protecting Keith at all costs. How unsexy would it be to Ken if Lance upchucked right here? He sort of felt like he was going to be some kind of sick as he begged himself to look away from where Shiro was being borderline possessive. “Don’t talk like you know anything about me. There’s no way you’re my…”

“Your dad?” Ken supplied gruffly, shaking his head when Keith practically growled. “Told you. And I been tellin’ you since y’all found me. I don’t know how I got to that hell-hole. Feels like I been there forever… Shit’s too scrambled for me to piece together enough yet, Keith. I ain’t got excuses.”

Unholy quiznak, it was more Keith drama. The last thing Lance wanted right now. Having the DNA of a purple furry meant every day was about your destiny on this ship. Lance just wanted to make it through most conversations without getting on his knees to beg Shiro for a whack-ton of crap he’d never deserve, much less get. Ken had been a good reason for imagination-Lance to get on his knees in a different context, one much less emotional and a lot more taking-advantage-of-the-gag-reflex-he-may-or-may-not-have, but Lance had barely blinked before this all morphed into the Boo-Hoo Keith Special.

“We can’t unrestrain in that state, clearly. You can’t even trust you, much less us trying to,” Allura announced briskly, speaking up again for the first time since the awkward silence had settled in. Truthfully, Lance had pretty much forgotten she, Coran, and the rest of the paladins were even there since all the excitement had left him adrenaline focused basically on the people who had to do with his dick: Shiro who inadvertently held a vice like grip on it, Ken who was helping it twitch in spite of aforementioned vice grip, and Keith who was trying to karate chop it into disuse so he couldn’t put it in Ken’s mouth. If he was gonna be self-centered though, Lance thought, at least it was for the sake of his own dick.

“I understand,” Ken agreed calmly with a nod of his head that made Lance more certain than he had ever been of anything that Ken was familiar with tipping a cowboy hat. Oh, damn. Interest back on. “I’m not trying to demand anything. Up to my ass in gratitude that I got rescued at all. Just hopin’ Keith might could trust me quicker. He knows me.”

“That’s why I don’t tr-”

“What the  _ quiznak _ is a might could?”

Lance probably should have been a little more attuned to not interrupting Keith when he had already made a few passes at his dad. That was just common sense with a black eye still throbbing. 

“It means ‘might be able to,’ Lance.”  _ Oh _ . Shiro addressing him by name? To tell him something he didn’t know because he was stupid, but still. Would probably and pathetically end up in the spankbank. Nothin’ like yankin’ ye ole meat popsicle to a guy who didn’t like you saying your name tacked onto the end of a condescending explanation. Yeah. This was a totally normal life Lance was living.

“Lance, huh?” Ken’s echoing of the name startled Lance so much he jumped a little, met only with another one of those infuriating and hard to read cowboy smiles. Could he classify everything Ken did as a cowboy action? He figured that anything he could imagine either in an old western or Ken doing naked in a cowboy hat could be considered worthy of the almighty cowboy adjective. It was basically anything a little bit Texan that made Lance shift in his jeans. That was his new definition. And thank god they had changed out of armor so those jeans could hide any faint interest in Ken’s consistent cowboying. Dick interest, at least. The flush on his face was probably betraying some of his new cowboy fascination.

If he had a dollar for every time his internal monologue repeated the word cowboy, he could afford the therapy Keith was gonna need when his rival fucked his dad.

“That’s me,” Lance piped up, a little too delayed not to be noticeable.

“Thought it was Legs.” He paused, looking Lance over for at least the third time now. “Looks like it should be Legs.”

“Well, it’s Lance.”

If that voice hadn’t been the subject of all his dreams, wet or otherwise, Lance would have had no idea who had felt the need to correct Ken in a tone that bitter. He guessed Shiro was having none of Ken’s shit. The slowly expanding emotional wall he was trying to build was having a hell of a time keeping ideas out; there was no way Shiro was coming to his defense in any way, because first of all, why would he? Secondly, history told him it was probably for Keith’s sake. So he didn’t have to see his dad flirt, or see Lance enjoy himself. God only knew how irritating Lance’s joy could be for Keith. 

“I’d’a held up my hands in surrender, but.” Ken tilted his head slightly to the side as a reminder that he was uncomfortably handcuffed right now. “Won’t call him nothin’ he don’t want. Like I said, not here to start a fuss.”

“I don’t mind being Legs.”

A glare. Immediately. No, two. And everyone that wasn’t glaring at him still had their eyes on him. He’d asked for attention, and here it was. Pidge and Hunk were incredulous, Allura and Coran seemed a little behind (though Allura definitely also looked a little annoyed), and Keith was about to kill him, which. What else was new? That was boring at this point. Shiro was pissed, too. He had always been pretty when he was in distress. In true pissed-Shiro fashion, his brows were furrowed so deep against his eyes that he looked like one of the mad stickers Lance used to get on the notes sent home during elementary school. 

“I’m just trying to make our guest feel at home!” Lance defended quickly. “You guys got him chained up like he’s done something wrong. Which, by the way, they did to Shiro when he came back to earth. He hadn’t done anything wrong but they tied him down anyway. And we had to go save his ass. Just saying.”

It was a lot to just say with no warning, that was for sure. Shiro was definitely stunned, even if that sticker type of mad face wasn’t fading at all. There was no empirical proof, but it was just something Lance knew instinctually, maybe from watching the way tension entered and left Shiro’s shoulders one too many times before this. Too many days spent hoping that if he could read Shiro’s irritation in his posture, then maybe he could figure out how to read him well enough that this guy he looked up to so fervently wouldn’t think he was an obnoxious freakin’ asshole for once and space marry him already. 

Anyway. Shiro was caught off guard. And still very much pissed. 

Lance knew it the moment he saw the shoulder movement. 

Everyone else knew it the minute Shiro turned on his heel and left the room in those signature quick, martial strides that gave him apparent strength and authority even as he stormed from the room in a silent, manly hissy fit.

This was too much. Lance had said too much, just as he had suspected when it was leaving his mouth, but now it was so much that he actually couldn’t change anything; he was in too goddamn deep to let himself suffer through any guilt for what had just happened in a few moments. What moments they were, too. Felt like they lasted both forever and a single ephemeral instant. But he wasn’t going to think about that.

Because, honestly, the guilt would crush him if he dwelled on any of it for even a split second. 

It was for his own self-preservation that he tried to repress it all like the true ninja of unhealthy coping mechanisms. In fact, he was already deeply ignoring everything by the time Keith had been about to take off after Shiro, Allura had stopped him and went off in that direction instead, and Pidge and Coran had taken off to go… fix something? Who knew. Who gave a fuck. Lance was busy balls deep in being super good at dealing with interactions and his own mental state. Just lookin’ for the G spot of how to handle his fucking problems. Livin’ it up.

He only snapped back into reality long enough to see Hunk stand there for a few uncomfortable minutes before Ken asked him if he wanted an excuse to leave the room.

“Yes.”

Of course, Ken let out a laugh that made Lance decide to take a seat near him. “Here’s your excuse, kid.”

“Thank god…” Hunk let out a breath of relief but also made sure to cock his head toward the door while making direct eye contact with Lance that was secret best friend language for ‘get the hell outta here before you make Keith kill you, man. Or himself. Or his dad. Or all three.’

And yet, perhaps unsurprisingly, when Hunk left, Lance did not follow. 

Instead, he was sitting far too close to Ken considering the team had more or less decided to treat him like some kind of threat. They weren’t even remotely touching, and Keith was across the room pacing, although marginally agitated now that he noticed it was only Lance and Ken left. Still, it’d be fine. “So…” Lance began aimlessly, propping his head up on his arm and elbow. He was hoping to come off as a little suave, though from experience he knew it probably wasn’t landing. “Mr. Kogane…”

“Told you, name’s Ken.” His demeanor hadn’t exactly changed, but it definitely seemed like something was almost imperceptibly different with Ken every time another person left the room. Maybe it was just that Lance thought there was a better chance of hearing something transparently obscene the closer they got to being alone.

“You got told my name’s Lance,” he hummed back playfully, “but you still seem fixated on Legs.”

“Oh, I’m awful fixated on Le-”

“ _ Dad _ .” Ken softened from his teasing for a moment when Keith interrupted, and a few beats passed before Lance realized that was the first time Keith had given in and directly called Ken ‘dad’ unless he had missed an instance of it between their discovery and now. 

“I’m just havin’ a laugh with your friend.”

“Oh, I’m not Keith’s friend,” Lance solemnly chose to throw in. “Fact is, I bet you’re the only Kogane that likes me any, Ken.”

He was pretty sure he could hear Keith’s teeth grit even from across the room. 

“I think I like you plenty for the both of us.”

Lance couldn’t have stopped the smile spreading like a pretty pleasant plague over his entire face even if he had wanted to. 

He didn’t want to.

“Got a question for you then, if you like me so much.”

“Shoot, boy.”

_ Hell _ . If he had had any reservations about making the question nasty, they were completely dispelled by Ken calling him ‘boy.’ Should that have been a thing? Didn’t matter. It was one for Lance.

“I hear you don’t like condoms, that true?”

“What the  _ fuck _ -?”

Keith’s response was loud but Lance had fully been ready to block it out, and man, was that preparation worth it. He watched smugly when Ken’s eyes widened in genuine surprise, and beneath all that rough, manly scruff, the faintest hint of a blush was blooming. Lance was both sure of it and proud of it. 

“You know, because no one would ever make Keith on purpose.”

Legs was a good nickname, actually, because it was only the sheer length of those bad boys with a dash of his natural speed that kept Lance safe from another black eye.


	3. Chapter 3

A friendship-fueled probation: a.k.a., treason in the highest degree

After Keith had chased Lance around the castle screaming bloody murder, it became clear to everyone that things needed to calm down. Scratch that. It had become clear to Hunk that things needed to calm down, because he was the one Lance ended up cowering behind for protection when Keith’s anger didn’t burn out and kept him in hot pursuit. Lance was sure that wasn’t the only motivation, though; Hunk was also the real mediator of the team and the only one getting caught in the middle. Shiro might have broken up more fights, but Hunk did it better as far as Lance was concerned. Just pushing Keith and Lance apart and telling them both to “stow it, cadets” wasn’t exactly intricate problem solving, even if Lance had thought a lot about Shiro’s hand trailing down his body when he shoved them away from one another. The warmth of Shiro’s fingertips was nothing compared to the warmth that prickled in Lance’s body and spilled to every inch whenever his thoughts lingered on that touch.

Sometimes all he could do to stave off the deep-rooted love for Shiro was attempting to dwell on the guy’s flaws. That was somehow always followed by fixating on how hot he was. How inadequacies faded into sexual appeal whenever Shiro entered his brain was a mystery for Lance, but still. It was a step up. He would rather want an anger fuck from Shiro than keep choking and spluttering on exactly how deep-rooted that stupid love was. It was manageable to want to fuck a guy who hated you. Being in love with him was a lot rougher on the ego, and even worse on his heart.

None of that would have even mattered if everyone would just let him blow Ken already, for Pete’s sake. Allura had strictly informed him after chasing down an upset Shiro that Lance was ‘not to be alone with Keith’s father at any point in time, lest his paladin privileges be revoked.’ Pfft. Yeah, sure. Like there were any privileges to being stuck out here besides flirting opportunities. If Allura was gonna threaten that, why was he even still stuck on this stupid ship in the first place?

Oh yeah… Saving the universe. Protecting his family. Trying to prove everyone wrong who’d ever said he wouldn’t amount to anything.

Maybe stuff a little more important than romance and/or getting his dick wet. But whatever.

Allura’s threat was empty, anyhow. Shiro would have kicked him off the team a while ago if that had been a viable option. Only replacement they had to pilot Blue if Lance got booted was… well, Ken. And Ken was pretty much the only person on the ship that they all trusted less than Lance.

The point was that Lance wasn’t going to be bossed around by Allura for fun unless it involved one of them being naked–it was even less likely to happen with this demand, since it wasn’t really Allura’s at all. If Shiro wasn’t even man enough to come boss Lance himself, why should Lance have to listen? Sure, it was probably hard to look someone in the face and admit you couldn’t stand to see them happy ever, much less when that happiness came at the expense of an uncivilized sand troll named Keith who was somehow the most precious cargo the universe had to offer. Shiro loathed him or whatever but he was still a good guy, so Lance could see him being hesitant to emotionally sucker punch even his least favorite teammate like that.

Except he was getting tired of offering Shiro sympathy and cutting him slack that he wasn’t asking for. Somedays it felt like all he did was rationalize Shiro’s decisions to himself, and he had never had that courtesy returned. Why couldn’t Shiro just intuitively _know_ that Lance had so much good to offer underneath his whole persona or whatever you wanted to call it? Yeah, so maybe he was loud. Obnoxious. Those weren’t really fronts either, honestly; that was just his personality. But… he was almost positive it wasn’t really that bad? Not if you gave him a chance to show his better qualities. The instinctive loyalty. A gut he could rely on, but a clever enough head that he could take a step back sometimes. The earnestly romantic side that no one ever let him use. It all had some kind of value, he was sure of it. So why the hell didn’t Shiro _want_ it?

Ridiculous, truly and utter-fuckin’-ly ridiculous how literally any train of thought Lance entertained for more than 20 seconds invariably became about why Shiro didn’t like him.

Hunk. The point of this was Hunk. Hunk, who was guilty of the ultimate betrayal. “Et tu, Brute?” Lance had whispered dramatically when Hunk made him promise the same thing as Allura had commanded, clutching his chest like it physically pained him for his best friend to ask that he not be alone with Ken.

“C’mon, man,” Hunk had sighed in reply. “It’s gonna make things easier on everyone. If you won’t do it for Keith, won’t you do it for me?”

If Lance had any weaker spot than his dick, it was Hunk and those big brown puppy dog eyes.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll try. Not my fault if Keith is still a jerk, though.”

Even if Hunk had betrayed him just by asking him to be considerate of Keith, Lance was a man of his word when it came to his best dude. He made a real attempt to stay away from Ken. Honestly! He did. Knowing Keith, Shiro, or both of them were watching that handsome cowboy like a hawk every hour of the day though, Lance couldn’t keep himself away for long when Hunk had only demanded a chaperone. He knew he would still probably start trouble, but his loyalty could only apply to what he directly promised.

You know, where cowboy cock was concerned.

It was somewhere between one day and two when Lance finally allowed himself to go set up camp at Ken’s feet, valiantly ignoring Keith’s attempts to shove him right back through the entrance when he showed up. Shiro had made the decision to relocate Ken to the cryopods where they had kept Sendak (like that had turned out so well), though Ken wasn’t actually in one. Lance was fairly certain that had to do with the whole tirade about not treating him like a prisoner for no reason.

Keith had stationed himself by the door, probably for the specific purpose of trying to keep Lance out if he tried anything, and Shiro was a little closer to Ken. Both were rigid in stance, Shiro naturally so while Keith’s usual pouty posture had been straightened out a little by the tension of Ken being there. Trying to understand what was going on in Keith’s mind was a game of Minesweeper Lance knew fairly well would result in him clicking a bomb his first try with no luck and no warning. He had essentially no clue about Keith’s life before the Garrison, and he selfishly didn’t want to worry himself with questioning why Keith was so wary of his dad. It was easier to chalk it up to that all-around shitty attitude the mullet princess put into place whenever Lance arrived. Ken seemed the same kind of fun as Lance, so maybe Keith just hated fun. Seemed mostly accurate.

“Thought I wasn’t gonna get any company that did more than stand’n’stare straight ahead,” Ken remarked when Shiro told Keith to “just give it up,” ‘it’ being popping blood vessels with the sheer exertion he was utilizing to throw his body weight against Lance and keep him out.

“Keith and Shiro aren’t big on small talk,” Lance agreed. Upon sitting, he had originally crossed his legs and settled in directly in front of Ken, whose back was leaned against one of the wall spaces between the cryopods. Unsurprisingly, only a few words had been shared before he was restless in that position and was sliding back in some interesting concoction of grace and ungainliness until he was lying perpendicular to Ken with his knees bent. “Or any talk with me, actually. Big or small. Only yelling allowed.”

Lance let out a slightly nervous chuckle after that so as not to seem so pitiful, but it wasn’t loud enough to drown out the odd sound that came from the non-Ken side of the room. Letting his head roll to the side, he looked left just in time to see Shiro turn and pace. Careful steps and a broad back muscles were all Lance could see in that direction, and he figured that probably meant he had imagined the noise from Shiro. It had almost sounded like a whimper, so it really made more sense that it hadn’t really happened. Why would Shiro care if Lance said they only yelled? It was the truth.

“Sounds like you don’t get all the appreciation around here you wish you had. Ain’t that right, Legs?” The tone was genuinely considerate besides the cocky tinge everything had that came out of the barely curled smirk Ken couldn’t seem to wipe from his lips with Lance around. Not that he was complaining, although he did have a few better uses planned for Ken curling his lips that would have made him feel even better than the honest sympathy. For a little while, at least. Understanding was maybe more beneficial in the long term than cumming down the guy’s throat, but Lance was more interested in short term solutions at the moment. Like orgasms.

“Eh,” he said, huffing off the suggestion with a little shrug against the cold ship floor. “I dunno if anybody really gets all the appreciation they want. Nobody’s worshiping at my feet, that’s for sure.”

“Cryin’ shame.” The answer came as Lance was flattening out his leg on Ken’s side, and he might have rolled over onto it if the teasing tone of Ken’s voice hadn’t skyrocketed and sent Lance’s hands to his face. Attempts to cover his blush were futile, but nowhere near as futile as the attempts to make it seem like his movement had just been a natural one. He sighed and yawned, both artificial, and then dragged the length of his lanky fingers down his facial features. When he peeked between them, though, he could tell Ken wasn’t fooled by the charade.

“You’re cute when you blush like that.”

That had been the most innocently nice thing Ken had said so far, but Lance could tell Keith and Shiro both still felt their panties ride up their respective asses immediately.

“ _Dad_.”

“Enough.”

It was truthfully creepy how close those two were, telepathically on the same page while Lance wept on the ground and kicked his feet like a toddler, begging for a picture copy of the same book. Couldn’t even pretend he wasn’t biased, though. He actually _had_ cried for way too long the first time Pidge had made a joke about how Shiro and Keith had probably snuck off to do the nasty. Thank god he had gotten out of the room before his eyes welled up, although Hunk had known something was up. He always did.

“Oh, I’m already handcuffed, kids, can’t I have a damn conversation without censoring?”

Trying not to giggle, Lance moved his head again in hopes of catching glimpses of Keith and Shiro’s reactions. Keith’s brows were completely diagonal lines and his arms were crossed over his chest, but none of that was new. Shiro had turned back toward them; his disapproval mirrored Keith’s but with none of the vulnerability. Lance couldn’t wait to get his ass kicked because Shiro loved Keith too much. That was gonna be super great for him. Weeks of hopeless crying definitely wouldn’t follow that episode.

“Takes a lot of guts to get smart with us when you’re handcuffed,” Shiro bit back. Lance hadn’t expected him to actually answer, and the venom boiling darkly behind the words was more than a little intimidating.

“If Legs was tellin’ the truth, he said you got caught up in this mess too.” Ken had dropped the smirk to look Shiro in the face without interference. “Arm looks like the same stuff they had out there. Don’t think you’re really gonna mess with me if you know yourself what really goes down.”

Apparently Ken’s arrival had signified regular incidents of someone coming down hard on Shiro with truths he needed to hear. Of course, Lance had been paying too close of attention for too long not to know Shiro wasn’t prepared for any of it.

Keith’s stubborn look faltered in concern for Shiro. “Hey,” he mumbled in that croaky, vulnerable voice that was pretty exclusively reserved for Shiro. “I can take ov-”

“No.” Shiro’s jaw was set tightly, but his words didn’t waver. “He’s right.” His eyes, still narrowed from their territorial focus on Ken, flicked over to Keith. “You go. I know you haven’t eaten today. Take a lap, refresh. We gotta do some of this in shifts.”

Expecting that request not to land without argument, Lance eagerly let his attention veer to Keith with some indulgence to his own unsavory affinity for drama. Fittingly, and because the world wouldn’t even afford Lance a guilty pleasure, Keith only opened his mouth soundlessly before snapping it shut again and nodding. He tossed Lance a look that just reeked of murderous intentions with something much more complex and conflicted thrown in Ken’s direction, stepping out of the room after he and Shiro locked eyes again. Another one of their “I would die for you but I would die without you” mental missionary lovemaking sessions, Lance presumed.

“You gonna let me talk now without embarrassing me in front of my kid?” Ken asked, eyebrow cocked almost like he was daring Shiro to start something in spite of that whole spiel about them both being victims of the Galra hell-fest.

“I think you were doing a bang-up job embarrassing yourself without my help, Kenny.”

Lance hadn’t really ever seen Shiro in this weird middle ground between completely pissed and scary calm, but it definitely put him on edge.

“It’s Ken” came the correction without too much heat, Ken’s concentration aimed too much back toward Lance to maintain that power struggle with Shiro. “And you’re gettin’ Legs all strung out. His eyes are wider’n a deer’s in headlights.”

The cliched comparison earned him a scoff and an eyeroll from Shiro, but its probably more intended effect of getting Lance’s jaw agape at the purposeful thickening of the accent was a total success.

“C’mere,” he murmured, warm eyes meeting Lance’s and melting the contents of his gut effortlessly. Lance stayed still as that melting turned to a fierce heat that pooled where he had once possessed functioning organs. Now he was just fluttery mush inside. It was a worthy trade off. He’d deal with the loss of his liver and pancreas if it meant he could wriggle under Ken’s gaze with his brain frying to shit until Jesus knew it was time to beam him into the Big Upstairs. Hopefully there were like, a hundred Kens in Heaven who could teach ten Shiros how to like Lance. “Sit by me and make me feel a little less like a prisoner. Ain’t usually got anybody as pretty as you just locked up with the homely rest of us.”

Lance could feel the flush returning with dizzying quickness. He made a point not to even glance toward Shiro as he scrambled up on all fours, barely more coordinated than Bambi, and settled down next to Ken until their sides were grazing. Though his body was faced in Shiro’s direction, he was holding his breath and straining to keep his eyes on Ken. He figured if his eyes didn’t move, then his thoughts couldn’t wander, and he could finally volley back some flirty talk without letting Shiro’s hold on his heart constrict him into paralysis. Or tears. He _really_ didn’t want to start crying on Ken because he was in love with Shiro. Sobbing over someone was surely in the top three worst ways to get a different guy’s dick wet before he put it in you.

“You’re not even a little homely, Mr. Kogane,” Lance breathed, a little less in control than he would have liked to appear. He was kidding himself if he thought he was in control at all, though. Without those handcuffs, Ken would only need thirty seconds to make Lance absolute putty in his hands.

It must have been the longest blink in the history of the universe Lance took just then, because by the time his eyes were fluttering open again, Ken’s face was much, much closer to his than it had been. In fact, his lips were only an inch or two from Lance’s neck; Lance swore he could somehow  _feel_ Ken’s scruff against his skin even if they weren’t touching anywhere but the spots where they had oh so slightly leaned on each other. “Thank you, darlin’.”

“Oh, god.” Lance wasn’t even sure whether he had thought that or breathlessly huffed it as a knee-jerk reaction to Ken’s breath making him shudder. Judging by the dark laugh that rumbled just above his shoulders, it was safe to assume it had been the latter.

“ _Enough_.” Shiro’s demand this time went straight for Lance’s gut to join all the mush sloshing around in there, only he had no earthly idea whether it was a good or bad addition to the already unstable mix.

“Shiro,” he choked out a little hoarsely, eyes still determined and trained on Ken. “Can you take a fucking chill pill for a moment and let me show Mr. Kogane how flexible I am-”

“Oh, flexible, huh?”

Lance didn’t need to move his eyes an inch to know how angry Shiro was as soon as Ken had purred that all suggestive and teasing; he could feel Shiro’s presence, growing in intensity until it couldn’t be ignored. If he had turned his head, Lance would have seen Shiro clinging bruisingly to composure and only weakly hoping he didn’t wring anybody’s neck before he could calm down.

“Go to your goddamn room!”

In time out, like a _baby_! Pissed about it, too, but far too horrified of the way that roar had ripped from Shiro’s chest to do anything but clamber to his feet and sprint out of the room. This… Fuck. This was a new height of infantilizing from Shiro, and frustration burned in Lance’s chest like a wildfire. It was spreading to the rest of him and mingling with the low thrum of interest that had been hungrily escalating before Shiro had slapped his “epic cock block” card onto the table. Lance was lying in bed, fully ready to shriek savagely into his pillow or wail in anguish at the drop of a hat when the mixture of sensations finally began to register more understandably with him.

Oh. Yeah. _Shit_.

Lance was high-key horny.

He didn’t even have time to consider whether indulging either the anger or sadness would be more satisfying than rubbing one out before his hips began to shift on instinct. To be fair, he had basically just suffered the microscopic version of orgasm denial. Talking to Ken like that had no doubt been working him up, and if he was being honest (which he would rather not have been) having Shiro’s eyes on him all the while expedited the process. He would just blame that solely on an exhibitionism kink instead of acknowledging the part of him that he knew wanted Shiro to see him be wanted. He wanted Shiro to see what he could do and what he could bring to the table and how good he’d look fucked over a table and-

No.

He wasn’t doing that.

He had jacked it to thoughts of finally pleasing Shiro and getting that attention he craved far too many times. That wasn’t happening. Not anymore. Not today. Not when he had something else to jack it to, and especially not when Shiro had just utterly humiliated him like that. Degradation was all fun and games until it totally fucked with your self-worth. Since Shiro had never really been in on the kink in the first place, it wasn’t surprising that Lance eventually did feel shitty. He didn’t want to feel shitty. He wanted to feel good.

He felt good now, pushing away the thoughts of working his ass off for Shiro’s scraps in favor of flickering his memory back to a few minutes ago. Ken. Ken, whose every flirty grumble resonated in Lance’s chest. Who looked at Lance like he was the only thing in the room, even when his own kid was present. Primarily, that was because Lance could be a downright tease, but it was enough for him compared to what he was used to getting. He’d say whatever he needed to if it meant keeping Ken’s dark and faintly curious gaze on him.

Shit. He could squirm like nobody’s business under that stare, and he knew that for a fact considering he was doing it now without Ken even in the room. His eyes fluttering closed, he flipped over on the firmness of the bed, burying his face into his pillow and sighing softly. The beds in the castle weren’t really soft, but they shifted under his movements close enough to resemble a mattress. He certainly didn’t have a hard time grinding against them in this position, a fact he knew from all the other times he’d let a lingering Shiro hand rile him up for days on end. Now he had the incessant touch of torsos to spur him on, the fresh and very real recollection of what Ken’s voice sounded like only inches from Lance’s ear. He shivered like some muscle memory had taken over his spine when those gruff whispers were suddenly entered his mind again. Fuck, the need was starting to get unbearable and a little choked off groan left his throat when he angled his right leg up to get better access to the bed’s surface. Grinding soundly against the firm solidity of his bed meant Lance could feel his dick strain against the stiff fabric of his jeans, but this was too good to give in to himself that quickly.

Ken out of those handcuffs again decided to occupy the prime real estate of Lance’s focus when he kicked his imagination on. Dinner the night before had been free of incident since he was still trying to obey the spirit of his promise to Hunk instead of the letter of the best friend law, and the whole meal had been almost dead silent, but none of that had stopped Lance from staring. The leather bracelet he had noticed was still stuck in the forefront of his mind, stark against Ken’s skin and all that arm hair that for some reason got Lance’s engine running in high gear. Hips picking up speed with thrusts punctuated by breathy grunts, he thought about how much he needed those forearms and the thick, scarred hands attached to them wrapped around his waist, splayed over his inner thighs. His own hands were balled up into tight fists under the pillow, but Lance tried to imagine without touch how it would feel to have Ken gripping at his sides, not letting him squirm like he was doing now and leaving bruises for tomorrow.

In their jeans, just like this, Ken’s old bootcuts against Lance’s lighter fabric with his bulge so distractingly throbbing behind the zipper. Jesus _fuck_ , Lance wanted Ken to breathe on his neck again and mutter some dirty shit about how bad they both needed it. He knew he’d be even worse than this if he was really pressed up against the heat and muscle that Ken consisted of. What made him so needy was the _immediacy_ , how it hadn’t been more than ten minutes since Ken had let warm breath tumble out over Lance’s neck and made Lance shudder so violently over such a small sensation. How he’d just been making Ken all these filthy promises with his eyes while he demanded Shiro let him keep making some verbally, and how he was still convinced that he’d maybe spotted a bulge far more impressive than his own when he’d drawn out the word ‘flexible’ with his voice too broken for it to be innocent.

How if he could keep the rest of the team busy with something, he was certain that he could get Ken to make him cum.

Fuck, did he want to cum.

Stilling his hips, he let out a bodily groan into the pillow and stayed still for a bit before flipping over again. He barely ever had the capacity to tease himself at all, and this had been much longer than he could usually manage, so it wasn’t surprising when he was abruptly unbuttoning his jeans with no semblance of patience. Shucking his jeans and underwear down in a few jerky movements, Lance had a hand wrapped around his cock before his thoughts could even catch up. He whined involuntarily, bucking into his own touch and biting his lip to try and keep quiet. Risking getting caught wasn’t all that exciting when he knew Ken and Shiro were both too far to hear. Anyone else hearing him would just mostly make things awkward.

He started his movements slow, but his frenzy for more wasn’t making that an easy activity to sustain. It wasn’t long before he was rutting up into his fist, pausing only to spit messily onto his hand and then continue on with that slightest amount of slick to fuck up into. The sound was nasty; his stomach flipped when his own spit hit against his palm and his mind decided to supply him with a healthy supply of images. Soon, he had those long, limber fingers wrapped around his dick to the idea of Ken holding his face by the jaw and spitting. So much for nothing derogatory? The edge of orgasm was calling his name way too loudly for Lance to consider the consequences of anything.

Focused grunts started to fade as he lost control of himself and those rough sounds distorted through the wreckage of his throat until they were fully moans. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but sturdy muscle and broad shoulders and a little bit of degradation, slipping fistfuls of dark hair and deep voices rasped against his collarbone, hands much bigger than his own gripped tightly around his cock for him to fuck up into and fall over the edge. Hands sometimes warm and pliable despite little scars, or sometimes a little cooler than room temperature with a little less give but a lot more power since they weren’t exactly human or flesh…

His own hand took over instead of his hips as he skipped over that consideration. He was too close, too fucking close to question what was going on in his head, too close to have any grasp on logic left. That kind of close where he could almost feel it already, where he knew he couldn’t stop from finishing if someone walked in at that very moment.

Jesus. _Jesus_. If that wasn’t fucking hot, he didn’t know what was. As his breathy whines picked up in octave and his whole body twinged with need, Lance let his final fuzzied thoughts drift to a fabricated image of the door barging open, wide muscle taking up the bulk of the frame and staring in awe at the show Lance was putting on. Eyes running down all of him, lithe and jerking as he wrung the deserved orgasm out of his desperate body. A grunt of arousal as Lance came.

“O-oh,” Lance exhaled aloud when the daydream and the quick pace of his fist finally brought him over the edge. “Oh, oh-  _oh_ , fu-fuck…”

His free hand gripped as tightly at his blanket as his mind clung to the fantasy of _him_ barging in when the final jump of hips left Lance arched and spurting steadily all over the twitching muscles of his abdomen.

“Sh- F- uh- fuck. Shi- Fuck, pl… please, Sh- _Shiro_!”


	4. Chapter 4

Being both disoriented and flooded with shame at the same time was not a state of existence that Lance particularly enjoyed, though he regrettably found it to be a familiar one. This was the reality he faced when his eyes shot open and darted around the room in a sleep-laden confusion. He had no vivid last memory for the first few seconds of being awake, and it took a tired whine and a lazy but much-needed stretch before anything even remotely settled into his brain. Ugh. Bleh. _Jeez_. The languid movement of arching his back muscles made him suddenly hyper aware of the blanket glued to his stomach. He peeled the fabric from his skin with a deeply repulsed grimace as his head started to shake into proper use and give him some context for what was going on. The memories flooded in backwards; oh yeah, jerking off, being sent to his room, fighting with Shiro, Ken making him shudder. The fight and subsequent humiliation were burning some pretty heavy guilt into his system even before the details of his fantasizing came back to him.

There was no end to how much shame Lance could feel for this shit, though. That nasty feeling in his gut got more toxic by the second.

He tried to burrow back against the clean side of the blanket and fend off the impending breakdown/self-loathing festival of embarrassment and remorse, knowing full well that curling up could only do so much to protect him from the horrible downswing his mood was riding out. Things had never really gone to these extremes at home. As much as he wanted to pretend like things had been perfect, they definitely weren’t, but random bouts of bummers so harsh that he couldn’t drag his ass out of bed to take a piss were a lot more manageable before the Garrison had ever happened. Less responsibility meant less stress and an easier time just holding on tight when a mood swing decided to fuck him royally.

So, things had gotten worse at the Garrison when his classes required more attention and effort from him. It would have probably been an all time high out here anyway with what Voltron demanded of him, but the way he let everything with Shiro get so out of hand contributed the most to all of this feeling like, even when doing his best out here, he was at his worst.

He could feel himself on the edge of what would be a pretty ugly spiral as he stared straight ahead, recognizing this edge of his more easily than the one right before an orgasm (though both were almosts that he had some pretty intimate familiarity with). It wasn’t until he was about to shove his face into the mattress and groan in disgust at himself that hard, impatient knocks on his door inadvertently grounded him back into reality.

“I’m not knocking again! I’ll just go get Coran to bust the door down if you don’t get up.”

The threat was muffled but Lance heard it clearly enough to snap into a panic. Adrenaline hammering through his system enough to put that whole immobile pity party on hold, he flailed aimlessly for a second before springing into useful action: wiping his stomach off with the already soiled blanket, reminding himself to thank God that his nap had only been long enough for that shit to congeal instead of dry completely on him, tugging his shirt down into place, and fastening his jeans back into place. 

“Coming!” he let out a little strangledly, too frazzled to laugh at the irony of ‘coming’ being the exact thing that had him frantically trying to get his shit together at the moment. 

Up on his feet in another second, he looked down at himself to make sure he hadn’t let something slip and was about to open his bedroom door with his dick flopped out of the zipper or something. That would probably not have been good. Everything looked more or less decent, though, albeit disheveled, and he tossed the blanket to displace it and make sure everything gross was covered enough to survive.

Four more angry, successive pounds at the door and Lance was running to get it open before whoever it was punched a hole into the metal. Who the hell could it even be? The voice had been too distorted to tell, but they were mad, so- Oh. Jesus, it couldn’t have been-? Here to yell at him? If it was, he was gonna l-

Oh.

“Keith?”

“You didn’t go blind, that’s great.”

Keith huffed and shoved his way into the room, looking around with his eyes narrowed but mostly like he had no real objective before he crossed his arms. Lance was pretty sure he couldn’t strike a balance without that specific pose because he was always doing it for whatever freak reason. Hopefully something utilitarian, because it looked dumb.

“No offense, but…” he began, still a little thrown off but trying to get back on his game enough to not let Keith take this opportunity of distress and discombobulation to finally murder him. Really his own damn fault for opening the door willy-nilly when he’d been walking around the castle making enemies and trying to fuck those enemies’ dads. “Actually, full offense. Why the hell are you in my room?”

“I don’t wanna hang out in here even more than you don’t want me here,” Keith sneered. Like, genuinely a sneer. Like ‘my father will hear about this’ kind of sneer. Only Keith tattled to Shiro instead of his father, since now it was partially his father that he was also tattling on nine times out of ten.

“That’s great, dude. I’m real happy for you. I repeat, _why_ are you in here?”

“I’m here on orders.”

Having a conversation with Keith when he was purposefully being a shithead was like pulling teeth with a rusty pair of pliers. Sometimes he wondered why he knew he’d actively save this guy from danger when he just so deeply resented his skills and Shiro attention to the moon and back. And the moon was way farther away from here than it was from earth, so that phrase was an even better indicator of exasperation. Fully warranted exasperation, by the way. Because Keith was a dick.

Which made it fine to fuck with him through his dad. Right? Eh… Ignore guilt time.

“If I have to individually ask you for every single detail,” Lance muttered, “we aren’t going to make it through this conversation. Without blood, at least.”

“I don’t mind blood.”

“I didn’t ask for a kink list.” When Keith stepped into his space like a territorial dog, Lance sighed and held a few fingers to his temple. Maybe some cranial pressure would stop his brain from exploding. “Can you just tell me what’s going on?”

“I’m supposed to… apologize.”

Lance’s scoff was involuntary but probably excusable. “You? Apologize? To me? Seems backwards.”

He watched somewhat nervously as something foreign flitted over Keith’s features, vulnerability Lance was unaccustomed to seeing from his teammate. Almost like he was hurt? Hurt by what? Lance knowing he was the one who should be apologizing instead of Keith?

Jeez. Like he needed anything else to add to the ever growing guilt list.

Nah. Keith was a… a… A grouchy foreskin. Not a person. No need for guilt on the S.S. Ruin Keith. 

He was running out of insults. (And excuses.)

“Yeah, it would be,” Keith answered after a beat of quiet that went on forever in both of their minds. “It’s not on my behalf.” He paused again. “It’s Shiro.”

“…Shiro?” Lance’s voice was all of a sudden smaller and less defensive. The same look of vulnerability Keith had just let loose was distorting his game face into one that gave away far too much. He tried to shake it off, but the damage was done if Keith’s own suspicious look was anything to go by. 

“He’s sorry for whatever happened after I left. I’m sure it was your fault, but he wouldn’t tell me and asked me to come say sorry for him.”

“Why didn’t he come?” Try as he might, Lance was still unsuccessful in all attempts to tighten up and stop unintentionally divulging the thousand different things sprinting across the forefront of his mind. Could Shiro really be sorry for that mortifying moment if he still hated Lance too much to even speak to him? If he thought _Keith_ would be a better apologizer? When Keith wasn’t even the one who was sorry? What if-

“He didn’t think you’d let him in,” Keith grumbled, cutting off Lance’s increasingly distraught train of overthinking. “I guess you’re not gonna tell me what he did, either.”

“Not if he doesn’t want me to.” Unsurprising that he’d protect Shiro without explanation or request faster than his still racing mind could keep up with his mouth. 

“Whatever. You just like knowing something that has to do with him when I don’t.”

“Oh yeah?” Lance laughed bitterly. “You say that from experience? I don’t really wanna hear how me knowing _one_  Shiro thing you don’t is just traumatizing for you. Maybe he’ll let it slip the next time you guys are taking turns at brown-nosing each other.”

Keith always had a dirty look on his face. Even with that contemptuous baseline, though, it was still unsettlingly easy to tell that this expression was a whole new level of pissed. “Everything isn’t about you, Lance.”

In spite of himself and the instincts telling him to just drop it, Lance let another resentful laugh bubble out of where his throat felt tight. “When has anything ever been about me out here?”

“Never. It’s not about any of us. This is about saving the universe. All the people who need us. So quit trying to make it about you.”

The tight, achey feeling in Lance’s throat was only the beginning; there probably wasn’t anything there, but it sure _felt_  like bile was biting up the same achey passage that his stupid continuations of this stupid, stupid fight kept pouring out of. He really wished he could shut up, but he felt a little dizzy, and having just been at the precipice of wallowing needlessly in his own mental self-flagellation, he really wasn’t handling this well. Bad self-esteem days and being called self-centered didn’t make that awesome of a cocktail. 

“Easy for you to say, since everything is about you all the time.”

Keith’s scowl held his glare for long enough that it would have been just plain awkward had they not both been so venomous and determined to maintain that. 

“Shiro’s the only one I trust, and I’m the only one he trusts. Sorry if you like to pretend any different, but if you actually gave a shit about anyone besides yourself and whether saving the day will get you a parade, you’d deal with that.”

Thank god Keith turned on his heel and thundered out of the room as soon as that had all left his mouth. 

It gave Lance ample time to close the door, crawl into bed, and stare numbly and empty at the wall without Keith seeing that his words had stuck the landing.

That wasn’t the kind of stuck that was supposed to happen. He was supposed to get stuck by Ken. And stuck real good. 

So why the hell were things worse than ever? 

Why was he back to suffering in silence through throbs of pain that resonated inescapably within his chest? 

How did he lay there and do absolutely nothing through dinner, late enough that the next knock on his door was a concerned Coran firmly urging him to come to the kitchen and eat something?

It was on that zombified kitchen adventure that Lance learned, through the haze of his emotional stupor, that Ken had not been forced into his handcuffs after dinner. 

“Yes, I suppose it was Shiro’s decision,” Coran continued thoughtfully as he looked for something (surely something disgusting, but it was a nice gesture) to feed Lance. “I think the decision has been made to rid him of them indefinitely. The princess wasn’t quite on board and I trust her judgment more often than not, but I believe she feels she owes Shiro a blind affordance of trust after the incident with Ulaz. Perhaps not the shrewdest of decisions, but I think Keith’s father is more worrisome around Keith than anyone else, and Shiro isn’t going to let him bother Keith, I’m sure of that.”

Even Coran knew how far Shiro was lodged into Keith’s ass with only the stick up there to keep him company. 

“So, uh. How did Keith react?” Lance murmured casually, hesitantly accepting whatever the hell food substitute was being handed to him. If Keith handing his ass to him hadn’t made him sick enough to his stomach, he had Coran’s cooking there to make his life fully barfarrific. 

“He certainly didn’t look thrilled, but I got the feeling Shiro had told him beforehand to avoid surprise.”

Yeah. Of course, again. Keith’s words had stung, but that didn’t make them wrong.

“Sounds about right.”

“He was still angrier than his usual self, though it’s often hard to tell. Hunk spent all night trying to calm him down.”

“ _Hunk_?!” 

Be it the taste of the gunk or the shock of the news, Lance instantly spit out the bite he had just taken. Coran blinked slowly before wiping off his face. 

“ _Yes_ , Hunk. And please don’t waste that. It’s very nutrient dense, so it comes in handy when Paladins don’t have much of an appetite but need to be sustained.”

The lack of appetite of previous paladins was probably due to the noxious smell of what Lance was still holding, but he kept that hypothesis to himself. “Hunk was calming Keith down?”

“I guess it was more of comforting. It worked surprisingly well.”

“Thanks, Coran. I’m gonna… finish this in my room.”

Coran looked at him a little peculiarly, apprehensive of the odd behavior to some degree, but when he couldn’t put his finger on anything solid enough to make accusations, he just nodded. “Alright, young paladin,” he agreed gently. “Get some rest. Don’t make a mess and make sure you do eat. You know where to find me if you need me.”

Part of Lance was clinging woefully to those scraps of genuine concern, heart flushing with some semblance of appreciation that Coran gave a single shit about him, but the other part, the one Keith saw that told him Lance was self-absorbed, just collapsed into more misery to think Coran really was the only one.

He barely remembered the stumbling trip back to his room with how sharply his mind was trying to dissect what Coran had said. Hunk. 

Hunk.

His best dude, his main amigo, his big bucket of love and affection.

Hunk, who usually was the one to come check on him if he didn’t show up to a meal.

That guy was too busy joining the “tongue fuck Keith’s asshole for scraps of Keith nonsense” fan club that ran the entirety of space. They were all defending a universe that worshipped Keith Kogane’s stupid flat ass, and Lance was fed up with it. 

This was too much. Any progress that might have been gleaned from feeling bad for the way he was with Ken or the harsh reality Keith had been trying to deliver in his room earlier was obliterated permanently. 

And if Hunk wanted to contribute to the hurtful agenda of the Toxic Sahara Goblin? Well, he was dead to Lance. So much for keeping the promise to always have a babysitter around Ken.

The apathy died out as Lance laid in bed longer, angry tears stinging at his eyes while he held his fists balled up for hours. He’d thrown Coran’s special food at the wall somewhere before throwing himself onto the bed. Forgotten all about the genuine kindness Coran had shown him. Just alone. He was alone. He was _all_  alone, and no amount of logic or proof otherwise was going to get that out of his head. He’d left his family for a stupid mission that he wasn’t good enough for with people who agreed on that front: he wasn’t good enough, period. 

And God. He was so alone.

He’d always told himself that spite was an awful thing to be fueled by. Competition was good and fun and made people better, but when it turned into spite, it was time to go home. 

The problem was, Lance couldn’t go home. 

He was stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere with nobody on his side and maybe he was being dramatic but that didn’t change the fact that he wanted to claw out of his own skin. You can only tell yourself that your reaction is too dramatic so many times before it all starts to leak out of its own accord.

Not in healthy doses, which was obvious when, after a night full of unresolved anger and frustrated sobs racking his body into a sore oblivion, Lance felt just as vindictive in the morning. He mellowed some as he stewed in his room, too paranoid to leave and karmically left with the awful smell of Coran’s meal so pungent in the tiny, windowless enclosure. By the time he did leave, he wasn’t foaming at the mouth, but the hurt was well placed and unfading in his ribcage, sharp enough to take a shallow jab every time he moved. 

When he did finally leave, he showered with as hot of water as he could stand to keep anything else from boiling out of him once he left the privacy of isolation. Free of the filth from his stomach and the stench of the good he had wasted, he took off purposelessly into the rest of the castle. 

He felt the tension rise automatically in his shoulders when he neared Keith’s room, but he kept his tongue and temper in check, an impulse control success rewarded by the door being open with no Keith inside. Instead… 

“Ken?”

A weary smile stretched over an extra stubbled jaw. “G’mornin’, Legs. Missed you at dinner last night.”

Lance softened just a little; he didn’t know what it was about Ken that made that possible, but he really wasn’t in any position to question some much needed relaxation. “Wasn’t hungry.”

“Don’t think you got legs that long skippin’ meals, huh?”

He couldn’t help but mirror a weak grin right back. “Don’t think that’s how growing works, though.”

“I’m the old dad. I’d know.”

Ken had been lacing up his boots and pulling them more or less tight when Lance had stopped just outside the doorway. The task finished and his feet firmly on the ground, his eyes had trained fixedly on Lance, but he hadn’t stood from his seat on Keith’s mattress. 

“Oh yeah?” Lance remarked, not breaking the eye contact has soon as he let it connect. Boldly, he sucked in a breath and stepped completely into the room; he only hesitated slightly before making sure the door slid shut behind him. Ken’s focus zeroed in on the closed door for half a second before he let it go and looked back to Lance. “That how you get all that facial hair to grow that fast? Showing up to dinner?”

“Think that’s just Shiro not lettin’ me have a razor,” he answered, amusement again shining in his eyes like it always seemed to when he looked at Lance for long enough. That let something nice squirm in Lance’s stomach for the first time in a good many hours. “Although you might not have any onboard, I guess. Y’all could be too young to need ‘em that bad.”

“Shiro’s not too young,” Lance snorted. 

“He’s a hell of a lot closer to how young you are than how old I am.”

Another bold step further into the room. When did bold become stupid? It was a thin line. “I don’t think you’re old, Mr. Kogane.”

Ken looked at him knowingly–a lot was said between them without words, even if Lance couldn’t always express what it was after the moment had passed. “Too old for you.”

“You don’t know what I can handle,” he scoffed back. “Besides, you don’t look a day over whatever age is flattering to you.”

“That’s some great sweet talk there, Legs. Refine that skill and you’re golden.”

Lance shook his head, smiling again but trying to sound earnest. “No, I mean it! You look like you’re in great shape. That’s sure something to be proud of.”

“Not the greatest ways I’ve kept in shape. Big boy with the scar would agree since I’ll bet that’s how he got built like a brick shit house.”

It would have been safe to assume that Lance didn’t want to talk about Shiro after most of yesterday, right? Wrong. That would involve logic, a magical cryptid that Lance grew more certain by the day he was not capable of. At least when it came to Shiro. “He was always like that. But I guess he did keep the muscles when he was stuck in space without us.” 

“Looks pretty strong,” Ken remarked, though Lance felt like there was something else he was supposed to be understanding. Reading between the lines wasn’t always his strong suit, even if they did communicate with so many lingering stares. Lance could never be _certain_  of what a look meant, even if he totally felt like he was. “I’m surprised you talk back to him so easy.”

“You look strong, and I don’t have a problem with being a smart ass to you, either.”

“That so?”

“That you look strong?” Lance teased, fully aware Ken had meant the second half of his claim. “You do. Real strong, Mr. Kogane.”

“I’m not _not_  strong,” he mused.

“Think you could lift me?”

Ken chuckled and held up his hands. “Woah there, kiddo. Hold your horses. I’m not lookin’ to start any trouble. I said it before, and I’ll keep repeatin’.”

“Who said trouble?” came Lance’s reply, a soft pout attached with a lower lip jutted just so to get that good attention. It had never worked on the god-forsaken ship before, but maybe today was his lucky day. “Didn’t ask you to spank me, just to pick me up. I won’t tell anybody if you decide lifting is third base for an old man like you.” 

Ken couldn’t help but laugh again, and every time, Lance felt the warmth surface in his body. Every bit of attention from Ken was like lighting a match; each one burned out way too quickly but when you were this cold, it didn’t hurt to let the little flicker of heat take you over for as long as it could last. “Back in my day, you didn’t pick somebody up til your honeymoon.” Still, Ken was standing, and Lance sensed the long-distance leap of his heart cleanly making it into his throat. 

“Modern times say we can just be liftbuddies,” Lance assured, struggling to keep his cool as Ken closed the short space between them. It was a shorter space than either of them had probably realized, because Lance had been slowly inching forward during the conversation without any idea of how far he had gotten until now. 

“Brace yourself, you little attention hog,” Ken taunted lightly. He looked into Lance’s eyes way too deep for Lance to keep breathing properly, and then suddenly there were hands. Hands on Lance’s waist, and then sliding down, and then rising and hoisting and _holy shit_ , he was well above Ken’s head and while one arm tucked under his knees for support, Ken’s other hand was securely on his ass.

“Okay, _wow_.” 

That was really all Lance had to say with his eyes wide and practically bugging out of his head, though when they looked down to Ken’s face, he would have liked to mention how handsome the guy looked as an afterthought. He was brave today, yeah, but not that brave. Not that confident at least, not with a hand on his ass. Ah, fuck. A big hand.

“You're lighter than a Texas Bluebonnet,” Ken crowed in that quiet tone of his, but with his enjoyment still distinctly shining through. “Prettier'n one, too.”

_That_  was about as happy as Lance figured he could get coming off such a shitty previous night.

Until the stupidity all came back to bite him in the soundly gripped ass.

Because this wasn’t his room.

So it wasn’t locked for him. 

And the door slid open to reveal Keith and Shiro both seething and exacerbating their visibly throbbing head veins. 

“LANCE.”

Uh oh.”

“Get _off_  my dad!”

He’d heard Keith yell a lot, but Jesus Christ, that was loud.

He momentarily worried that Ken was going to drop him in surprise, but he was relieved to be swiftly and carefully lowered from the height. Maybe in fear or that spitefulness from earlier or any number of bad things Lance had going on nowadays, he clutched tightly at Ken, arms wrapped around his shoulders in a refusal to let go. It seemed, either consciously or unconsciously, Ken was doing the same. As Lance arched closer, Ken pulled him in tighter. This time, though, there were two large and capable and insert 3000 sexy adjectives hands grasping his ass. Lance couldn’t have stopped the dark flush that flowed into his face and hung high on his cheekbones if he tried. 

There was tense silence, Lance far too sheepish to try to break it himself. He had no idea who actually _would_  until Ken’s voice vibrated deeply against where they were completely pressed up to one another. 

“He wanted to see if I could lift him,” Ken justified more or less innocently, although Lance didn’t know how innocent anything could sound with hands like these making him lose his mind.

“He can!” Lance supplied breathlessly, hoping the way his chest heaved against Ken didn’t make that story any less believable. 

“I can.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> here are the links to chii's art of the last scene! (which came before i wrote this chapter so the dialogue is chii's. all my good ideas are chii's.)
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/xfwipsx/status/885292970185940992)  
> [tumblr](http://fwips.tumblr.com/post/162954950679/you-look-so-big-and-strong-i-bet-you-could)


	5. Chapter 5

The bedroom, though inexplicably dim, shed what was subjectively enough soft light on the barely-breathing pair. As it stood, their close proximity drowned them both in each other and stolen, unrefined glances. Everything was a little unrefined, in fact, slightly fuzzy in that misplaced warm glow, but clarity wasn’t an integral factor in this situation.

Instead, all focus drew naturally to the subject at hand; bodies slightly vibrating against one another, that ineffable and inimitable sensation of touch radiating between each point of contact. Lance was perched precariously on Ken’s lap, eyes wide like he was too afraid to let out a single breath, or anything else that might suggest he didn't belong there. A breath would have been permissible, though, because aesthetically speaking, he unequivocally belonged exactly where he was. Another flush was hanging on his cheekbones, apparently a reliably regular phenomena with Ken around, but now his mouth hung slightly agape of its own accord. His back, flush against Ken’s chest, curved just right to give him that tiny bit of the pleasure of an arch, and every move jolted him like worn hands against his t-shirt had electrical qualities somehow (though this possibility wasn’t inconceivable with Ken’s hands gripping that tightly at his waist). The currents bit sharper when Ken dropped his head a little to exhale teasingly against Lance’s collar bone. Unlike the last time Ken had breathed all hot and heavy on him like this, this Lance whimpered in surprise when wet heat trailed against the strained tendons of his neck. The way he jumped again when Ken chuckled roughly and sucked into a spot that made Lance’s keening worse made it more or less evident that Lance wasn't as experienced as he liked to let on.

It didn't look much as if Ken cared, though, and he probably got some defiling-virgins satisfaction out of the deal as he kept his mouth glued to Lance’s throat and snuck a hand down to the tensed, shaking thigh that couldn't pick one spot to stay still in on his lap. Whimpering again, Lance didn’t do much to even attempt self-control when his hips jerked slightly at the pressure on his thigh muscles and, truthfully, behind his zipper.

“Fuck,” Lance managed out, wriggling around despite the more than capable hand attempting to hold him still. In Ken’s defense, it was only one hand, and a pretty half-assed attempt. Not like that was anything to blame him for, among everything you could’ve picked to start assigning blame. The image was reasonably picturesque, depending on whether you could substitute ‘pornographic’ for ‘picturesque’ in any context. Regardless, Lance sure was a sight to be seen all overheated and squirming like that.

“You always had a potty mouth like that?” Ken grunted suddenly, probably more words than they had exchanged in a while if Lance’s newly wide-eyed expression was anything to go by. “Or hangin’ around a nasty guy like me been a bad influence on you?”

“You made me _bad_ ,” came the reply, choked around a moan, and though something about the words were far too stilted to have believably come out of Lance’s mouth, the sounds he was making were a good enough distraction.

“Gonna let me ruin you then?” Ken’s question was punctuated by a quick flick of his wrist, giving Lance limited time to react before a thick hand was covering the bulge in his jeans.

There was another strangled sound, somewhere in one of those little sweet spots among whimpers, whines, and moans, and then there was… haze, mostly. A gap in the story. Certainly some events had to transpire between the two points, but Lance went from fully clothed in Ken’s lap to only wearing his t-shirt and lying slack jawed over the bed.

Ken had certainly moved as well in the lapse of time between changed positions, and it was pretty evident he had been the instigator. Still gripping into Lance’s hips, though much more brutally at this point, his mouth was against Lance’s ear once again.

“Fuckin’ filthy how bad you want this,” he hummed gruffly, rocking his hips against Lance’s with a grin barely visible in the muted lighting but very much audible as he spat out his teasing. Though his hips were moving much harsher than they had been, he was still only grinding against Lance’s ass. Unlike Lance, however, Ken was much closer to being fully naked. His jeans were pooling stiffly around his boots, but their fluidity or allowance of movement didn’t really seem to matter–he wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

The moment he straightened out his back, his bare chest got a little of the warm glow lighting treatment. Hair took up a significant portion of space there, but that shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone who had seen Ken’s arms. Soft scarring was barely noticeable in select spots and, like the hair, occurred only in the most ruggedly and classically attractive places. You didn’t have to… really come to appreciate his body as its own thing, to deal with Ken’s scars. They were the kind dads told their sons that “the ladies will dig those when you get older.” Not the kind to hide under turtlenecks and armor at all costs.

“D-da--addy.” Lance’s voice broke a good few times as he tried valiantly to power through the two syllables that were currently causing him to rut harder against the side of the bed. Some cocktail of shame at sounding like that and pride of _sounding like that_ was wrecking him from the inside while Ken’s cock hovering near his exposed ass was doing the same externally.

“You _need_ it.”

Though he practically choked at the statement (certainly not a question), Lance nodded immediately. “But I’ve… never…”

Ken shook his head roughly, letting go with his right hand from where he’d been clutching at Lance’s waist hard enough to leave bruises to smack soundly at his ass. From under the twinge of pain, Lance let out a sharp yelp and reached out to ball up his fists in the blanket. “You think you’ve got me fooled?” Ken laughed. “Just ‘cuz you talk like you know what it’s like to get fucked, doesn’t mean I believe you. You’ve got virgin written all over you, Legs. I wanna sully you up.”

That warm light in the room flashed red for far too long to have been some kind of ocular trick, but the pair all wrapped up in ruining each other didn’t really seem to notice. They had sullying to worry about.

The sound at that point was a little warped, like listening to them grind on each other underwater, but the distortion faded lightly as Lance tried to arch back and wordlessly beg for more.

“Nah, daddy’s cock would tear you right up if I just gave you what you wanted,” Ken mused, bent at the waist again so his words rolled out right against Lance’s earlobe and his chest pressed tightly against Lance’s back. That meant a lot of things for the sensations between them, and they both felt it when a shiver ran through them from beneath. “Always asking for too much or not enough, huh, Legs? Gonna burn out if you don’t take care of yourself.”

Another flash of red went ignored.

Lance’s face did change a little, though, like part of him realized the gravity of what Ken was saying. Not the dangers of impatient anal sex, mind you, but his inability to ask for what he wanted and say no to what he didn’t. The doubt flitted on and off of his features in mere seconds; he couldn’t stay introspective like that when Ken’s mouth was on his neck again. “Gimme _somethin_ ’,” he whined, pitifully working the words out of his throat around the hoarse sound trying to escape alongside.

“Darlin’, you know I’m gonna.”

Breath held, Lance tried to turn his head back a little to catch even a glimpse of Ken’s face, hoping for even the smallest hint of what that something could be. Alas–the hesitant peek was short-lived. The hand that had landed a well-received slap to Lance’s ass snaked up quickly to his jaw, and soon Ken was leaving finger-shaped bruises there instead of on the right side of the thin hips still stuttering beneath him. “Daddy’s gonna fuck your pretty little thighs.”

Lance reacted damn strong to that, practically vibrating against the side of the bed as he tried to get some friction, and then-

Another gap. Now Lance was still grinding against the bed like there was no tomorrow, but the constant moans that kept puncturing out through his overworked lungs were spurred on by Ken thrusting against the shaking muscles of his thighs. The consistency of the sound made everything blend a little more than it had been, but three key components seemed to be the main culprits: Lance letting out whatever sounds his body seemed keen on (regardless of anything and without trying to control how he looked for once), Ken grunting rhythmically (though increasing in volume every time the base of his cock slid right against the soft skin of Lance’s legs), and the almost comical squelches of lube (that appeared out of nowhere in definitely comical fantasy fashion).

Those unfiltered moans started to clarify a little as Ken’s grunts slipped into growls, and when it became evident Lance was crying out for “d-da-addy!” again, abruptly the entire scene vanished.

Like the moments where time had gapped, only instead of being replaced by a new Lance and Ken fucking arrangement, it was the dark ceiling of a bedroom.

His bedroom.

Shiro’s bedroom.

His eyes were wide open into the nearly complete darkness, a few unsteadily alert blinks before he could make the brainwave connection to being awake.

A few more eyelash flutters before he realized how hard his dick was throbbing in his pants.

Things would have been a little more confusing if this hadn’t been such a familiar way for him to snap his eyes open: Lance’s moans ringing in his ears, his cock dragging with reflexive hip movements against the mattress and the fabric of his clothes, more shock than guilt (but certainly both) accumulating in his stomach. He wished he could just shove his face into the pillow harder, hard enough to disappear into it with a puff of feathers and smoke, but all the focus he would have needed to make that happen was being siphoned into all the blood that had rushed to his crotch at some point during the dream.

Maybe before he fell asleep. He didn’t know. He rarely had memories of falling asleep nowadays, since he would have been able to recreate the environment if he could recall them.

Usually it was more of a ‘passing out from exhaustion’ type of deal.

He really had little enough self-awareness in his own body by the passing out point that he wouldn’t have been too surprised to find out he’d gone unconscious from irregular blood flow of any kind.

Who knew anything anymore? Not him.

All he knew was that things were different.

He’d had enough dreams like that not to be too disoriented when he woke up with his dick aching for a hand tight around it. Galra hand, flesh hand, toned thighs all soft and much darker than his own were after Kerberos. It didn’t matter. He needed something after his unfiltered mind went places like that.

But this was different.

This time he wasn’t in the dream.

That weighed most heavily on his conscience as he rolled over from his stomach. He usually couldn’t sleep like this, all flat and even on his back with memories of being strapped down like this against his will flooding his mind, but awake and attentive enough, he could stomach it. Long enough to alleviate the struggle between elastic and erection, at least.

He wasn’t in it.

It wasn’t him pressed up against Lance, earnestly working to draw those filthy but oh so fulfilling sounds out of that overexerted body. It wasn’t him, which made it so much creepier and simply screwed-up to be so goddamn _hard_ when he woke up from that. When the idea of the dream being reality made his skin crawl this gratingly, Shiro knew he was at least a little bit disturbed for shoving his hand down his pants at the thought of it.

He was convinced that his brain couldn’t conjure images of Lance that didn’t make him react this strongly, though, even if it wasn’t always agonizing lust. Sometimes the agony was just how beautiful Lance was draped over the arm of whatever furniture he was making himself comfortable on. Agony was such a strong word to describe finding someone pretty, and Shiro often struggled to deal realistically with normal expectations of severity. Sometimes he couldn’t be on board with calling what happened after Kerberos ‘trauma.’ and, well, while one hand rubbed at his cock in his pants, the other was made of metal.

It was difficult to classify a crush as agony when he was no stranger to sudden unrecognizable and unbearable memories materializing into his headspace.

Yet, before he could talk himself out of using that terminology, he did.

Being near Lance was agony.

That’s where his mind went unthinkingly whenever he would think.

Thinking was too much. He didn’t have the control of his thoughts that he expected, _demanded_ from himself. Thoughts drifted to Lance too fiercely, too often, too inappropriately. Too much to justify for a member of a team that Shiro was supposedly leading. Circumstances he needed to be impartial for. Fairness was one of the ultimate requirements of leadership, and the effort he put into not playing favorites was, frankly, exhausting.

It felt like a low burning itch most of the time, just wanting to give Lance anything he could get his hands on. The metal joints of his fingers twitched in a kind of hunger to pick any vegetation that reminded him of flowers. _Flowers_. In the middle of space, defending the universe from all-consuming evil and trying to sweep panic attacks under the rug daily, Shiro could barely keep his hands to himself when he saw flowers.

He wanted to give one to Lance.

See his eyes light up.

Watch in total awe at how that toothy smile could just…

Glow.

So, logically, he funneled those urges into humping against his hand in a desperate chase toward an orgasm as some kind of relief.

Attempting to stifle a groan, he let his right hand fall back and twist long fingers into the give of the pillow. The dulled sensation of touch meant he couldn’t immediately feel the pillow case graze against the black pads of his fingertips, but the need of the grab was more of the point anyway. The _need_ , need to rub all that want out, want that reverberated through those fingertips that ached to pick flowers and the arms that wanted to wrap tight around Lance’s heaving chest when walking past his bedroom door made eavesdropping on not-so-soft crying inevitable. Yes, even the want to work his dick against Lance’s thighs like Ken had gotten to in the dream–all of that _had_ to be channelled into getting off like this, with his teeth sinking into his lower lip and groans rippling through the tense muscles of his throat and neck.

He could give himself this, and still expect to be fair outside of it.

He could pretend, if he let himself have this.

It was enough to help in pretending that Ken didn’t make his blood boil out of want to protect Keith alone. Easy enough to ignore the fact that Ken had shot so much more tension into his life harder than he was about to shoot his load, only getting more pissed at everyone and himself by letting Ken stay on his mind while he tried to get himself off. That Ken had projected himself into Shiro’s own already sorely maladjusted wet dreams, taking up the space between Lance’s thighs where Shiro’s cock belonged. Waltzing into fantasies and letting Lance writhe around on his lap, calling him pretty and riling him up like Shiro was supposed to, doing everything right that he couldn’t… and yet, doing everything _wrong_ , smacking Lance’s ass without any of the respect and admiration that was required, goddamn it. Refusing to address him by his actual name. The objectifying nickname, the rough treatment and the take, take, _take_ of how it all came off to their audience.

But here was Shiro, the audience, huffs labored and getting caught in his chest, jerking off to that very same scene of taking.

How pure could his fixation on giving Lance flowers be when he could stroke himself to the thought of that angular jaw being grabbed by someone Shiro didn’t trust as far as he could throw him? He asked himself that every time he didn’t stop this sort of thing from happening, laying back and reveling in the sensation of more pretending: pretending he couldn’t feel his Galra hand fisting his cock not because of the dulled sense of touch but instead from Lance’s slender fingers working over the pulsing veins so very visible on his dick. It was Lance, Lance’s hand working him over the edge, and that was a thing he could live with if he told himself he needed it to keep the team running smoothly.

Those rationalizations all came before Ken showed up and made sure nothing was running close to smooth, hoping to wreak havoc enough to throw everything into a grinding halt. He could show up all Texan and flirty with the time and position to flirt with Lance and force Keith into feeling abandoned all over again. To saunter into other people’s dream fantasies, the only place Shiro could really indulge in anything before the guilt settled like a heavy film on everything he touched, and fuck up against Lance with the kind of goddamn scars people found attractive.

Not the kind he had to hide under this turtleneck or his armor.

Not the kind he couldn’t show Lance for fear that flowers wouldn’t be enough to make him still lovable.

Not the endearing kind of lovable.

The kind where he wasn’t sure he’d still be able to be loved if someone saw the fucking mess under his clothes.

But damn, if he could shove that down far enough, the outside view of Lance getting fucked now crisp and indelible in his memory would help him cum so fucking hard.

That’s what he knew how to funnel the want into, need leaking onto his fist and pants in the form of precum as he squeezed his eyes shut tightly to recreate those new and totally fabricated memories. Lance squirming and needy and moaning “daddy” too shakily to even help how bad he wanted the attention of that kind of touch–it all struck right up Shiro’s spine and into his dick. He was getting closer by the second with his imagination running wild the way he refused to let it on any other topic, fixating on how good he could make Lance feel and how intense he could cum with Lance shaking in exertion under his touch.

How bad he knew Lance needed this, even if he ignored that fact most of all.

How much relief he could wring out of his teammate, his sharpshooter, his nothing at all by fucking up against Lance’s probably pretty cock instead of his own crampy fist.

How the excuse of wanting to make things easier was fading hard and fading fast.

How-

“Fuck!” he grunted, throat raw and every muscle straining as cum started to blurt from the head of his dick all over the dark stretch of his pants.

If he had gotten up in any attempts to erase the proof, both physically and mentally, of what had just happened, the movements would have been wasted. The wet spot of cum seeped against his crotch as soon as stiffness started to lax out of his spent cock, and as he knew from past experience, that feeling was the physical manifestation of his guilt. Walking to the showers with cum fresh against his thighs was experiencing a nasty slick of shame that, though he wouldn’t be seen at this time of night, was far too discouraging to bother making the trek. Dejected, Shiro dropped his head hard against his pillow and sighed as if he had anyone to blame for all these messes but himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you enjoyed this gratuitous angst porn. i know the kence portion is cheesy/cringy as fuck, but it is shiro's messy dream fantasy world. i really expect his tired brain to only supply bad porn dialogue.
> 
> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/shxnce/) for livetweets of how i can't believe i write this shit.


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